Kicking off the Cambodian Leg

We woke up to the realization that, though only a short distance away, Cambodia is not within the borders of Vietnam and therefore is an INTERNATIONAL destination and maybe we should considering getting to the airport immediately.  We scurried around a bit, made it onto our flight and and short time later, touched down in Siem Reap.

We made our way to Frangipani Villa, and after the semi-sketch lodging of the previous nights, we were definitely ready for this place.  It was beautiful.  The lobby is open air, with billowing white gauze curtains, and the room is accented with the work of local artists.

I could happily have moved into the lobby, but they took us to our cute little room.  Probably one of my favorite things about it was the picture in the bathroom- it was a framed picture of that very same bathroom.  I'm not sure if they were trying to be funny, modern artsy, or just ran out of artwork to hang, but I thought it was highly amusing.

Since we had been on the go for so many days in a row, we planned to take full advantage of hotel amenities and just relax.  We had a delicious lunch in the hotel restaurant, during which I challenged the allergy gods and went for the Panang curry containing pineapple, and then moved to the garden side pool.  The most difficult decision I had to make for the rest of the afternoon was whether to enjoy my margarita from the comfort of my chair, or the hot tub.

When it was time to eat again, we met up with Nattie and Heggie's friend Ben from college.  He and his girlfriend Kim took us to Studio 26 for some Cambodian cuisine.

 
Ben is the founder of an amazing NGO called Everything's Gonna Be Ok that is based in Cambodia.  His organization is dedicated to providing educational and vocational training for young Cambodians who want to enter the hospitality industry.   I really admire the work that they are doing and found myself entertaining the possibility of coming to volunteer with them in the future.

SEA part 2

Off on another South East Asian adventure!  Or at least after 23 hours of flight time I will be.

As expected, there have been a couple of minor travel incidents.  I arrived at the airport and tried to check in at the kiosk but got an error message and was directed to the "resolution desk".  There. I was told that I did not have a seat on this flight.  It was then that I recollected, about a month ago, Priceline called me and said that American Airlines had changed the flight time to LAX and because of that, we would miss our connection to Shanghi and they needed to change me to an earlier flight.  Not a big deal, except for the fact that apparently they only changed it on the itinerary, not in the actual ticketing system, so the airline still has me booked on the old flight.  This, the woman at the desk informs me, is a problem.  Fantastic.

So I stand there, wishing for a paper bag to breathe into,  while we wait for the manager to arrive.  Arrive she does, and she is......how can I put this nicely?- an unsympathetic bitch.  No hello.  No apology.  Certainly no smile.  Just a frosty explanation that, it's really between Priceline and I because it's Priceline's fault, not theirs.  I'm torn between bursting into tears and leaping over the counter to rearrange her face, but I don't think either of those actions are going to get me very far with the ice queen.  Instead I say that I don't actually care whose mistake it is, I want her to tell me what I need to do to fix it because I'm trying to get to Vietnam for my birthday.  I get no response, she continues typing away at the computer for what feels like an eternity, turns to the other woman behind the counter and says, "That's really all we can do," and walks away.  What!?!  I wait for the woman to tell me I'll be spending my birthday alone in the Beirut airport or  some other equally appealing scenario, but she doesn't say anything either and keeps typing away.  I finally can't take it anymore and ask her if I should continue having a panic attack or if I'm going to get on this flight.  Turns out, "That's really all we can do," means "I fixed it, you're all set, sorry for the inconvenience," in bitchspeak.

Nattie and I meet up and make it on the plane.  I nap blissfully all the way to LAX since planes work better than NyQuil to help me sleep and I only had about 2 hours of napping time last night by the time I finished packing.   Upon arrival it occurs to us that we don't actually have the boarding passes to get onto our next flight, so we have to go re-check in at the desk and get them.  At the desk Nattie realizes she forgot to print out the picture she needs for her Vietnam visa, then busts the zipper on her bag and we two things become evident; we are perfect travel companions and it will be a miracle if we make it to our destination.

Picture-less visa doesn't turn out to be an issue and we make it to our gate without a problem, unless you count forgetting your newly acquired boarding pass and your passport in the bin at the security  screening area- which I may have done and not realized until my name was announced overhead throughout the airport, suggesting that I return to security and collect them.

The 15 hour flight itself was okay.  I woke up from a 2 hour nap to be served some truly terrible airline pork and rice, so I ate the accompanying square of cheesecake and went back to bed.  I got about another 4 hours of sleep in before I was awakened by a baby a few rows back who decided that she was over this whole flying thing & was going to let everyone know about it for the next hour or three.  That was followed by 2 hours of staring a George Clooney's dreamy face for the inflight movie & another sub-par airline meal.  By then I was ready for another nap and before I knew it the flight was over.

We landed in Shanghai and had about 4 hours to kill before the next flight. A couple of facts about the Shanghai airport- they do not sell backpacks, they do not have ATMs, and they do not have soup dumplings.  So all in all, a rather disappointing experience there.

I was knocked out for the entirety of the flight to Vietnam except when they came around with what was by far the strangest assortment of snacks I had ever seen arrive on a tray.  It had onion cookies (who thought that was a good idea?), radish spread, a roll with a mini hotdog hidden inside (that is not the kind of birthday surprise I was looking for, I need to know in advance if I'm going to be consuming a hotdog so I can get in the right mental state), some sort of fruity flavored bread, and two cookies that were a cross between an Oreo and those cardboardy sugar wafers. 

When they woke us up to land I had turned 30 in the interim, and Nattie gave me a disposable camera that prints the pictures with birthday borders on them, so that was a pretty awesome start to a new decade.

The visas that we got online ahead of time proved to be nothing more than a way to rid ourselves of $25 pesky American dollars, as we waited in the same line with everyone else, and still had to pay an additional $25.

After paying a taxi driver an astronomical amount of money to drive us to our hotel, the Ha My 2, and unsuccessfully attempting to haggle with the front desk to get a deal on the room they would clearly not be renting out to anybody else at 1:30am, we ditched our bags and went out for something to eat.

The guy at the hotel gave us a recommendation for a 24 hour noodle place that turned out to be awesome.  We sat down at a little table on the street and had some delicious, delightfully spicy, noodle soup and a couple of birthday beers before heading back, full in my stomach and my soul, to the hotel for our first horizontal sleep in 2 days.